At their Nov. 7 meeting, members of Village Council unanimously approved a request from Home, Inc. to waive tap-in fees for the proposed Home, Inc./Buckeye Community Hope Foundation affordable senior housing project.

Over the summer Home, Inc. came to the Village with a plan to develop a senior apartment building on the Barr property, with the help of development partner, Buckeye Community Hope Foundation, based in Columbus.

John Emmeus Davis of the Champlain Housing Trust in Burlington, Vermont met with a group of community members Monday morning to promote community land trusts as a way to acheive affordable housing in Yellow Springs.

The Home, Inc. community land trust organization — which creates affordable housing by having homeowners pay only for the house, with the land staying in a community trust — along with the Yellow Springs Village Council, hopes to jumpstart a conversation on affordable housing.

The Home, Inc. board of trustees decided last week to terminate its contract for a purchase option with Rabbit Run Farm on Dayton Street. Home, Inc. needed more time to establish a development partner for its housing project, and Rabbit Run owner Suzanne Patterson could not extend the option past the June 2010 limit specified in the contract signed in October.

The historically green space at Rabbit Run farm that is alternately high-touch vegetable garden and brambly wildbrush, home to fox, deer and, of course, lots of rabbits, may be in for a change. Last month, Home, Inc. bought an option to purchase the 7.5-acre farm on Dayton Street to accommodate what the housing group hopes will be its first mixed-income, energy-efficient development project.